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Facilities & assignments

Between battles, your mercs earn their pay on the map screen: patching each other up, fixing gear, training stats and militia. 1.13 keeps all of the classic assignments, tunes them through Ja2_Options.INI, and adds a long list of new jobs — from radio scanning to burying corpses. On top of that sits the facilities system (introduced by Headrock's HAM mod and long since part of core 1.13): specific buildings in specific sectors offer extra assignments and bonuses, at a price and sometimes at a risk.

To give an assignment, click a merc's assignment box in the map screen (the same menu also pops up from the merc's command menu in tactical). The current menu offers: On Duty, Doctor, Disease, Patient, Vehicle, Repair, Radio Scan, Snitch, Train, Militia, Get Item, Fortify, Intel, Administer, Explore and Facility. Several of these open submenus.

Assignments need time to bite

A merc must stay on an assignment for at least 45 minutes before it has any effect (MINUTES_FOR_ASSIGNMENT_TO_COUNT in [Strategic Assignment Settings], Ja2_Options.INI). Hunger and thirst also degrade assignment performance if the food system is on, and injured or exhausted mercs work poorly.

The classic assignments, tuned

All the vanilla assignments are still here, but their speed and rules are externalized in the [Strategic Assignment Settings] section of Ja2_Options.INI:

Assignment What changed in 1.13
Doctor Speed set by DOCTORING_RATE_DIVISOR (default 2400 — the INI notes a theoretical maximum of about 150 healing points per day). Doctors also cure most diseases and can treat militia via the militia submenu (see Militia). Doctoring at a hospital-type facility is faster and uses less of your med kits (see below).
Patient Natural healing speed depends on activity level: divisor 1 while a patient, 4 on light work, 12 on hard work (NATURAL_HEALING_SPEED_DIVISOR_AT_..._ACTIVITY_LEVEL). Emergencies (below 15 health) demand real medical skill (BASE_MEDICAL_SKILL_TO_DEAL_WITH_EMERGENCY). Cambria's hospital still treats paying patients — HOSPITAL_HEALING_RATE (default 5 points/hour).
Repair Speed set by REPAIR_RATE_DIVISOR (2500). ADDITIONAL_REPAIR_MODE = TRUE switches to a priority system: equipped weapons first, then equipped armor, then inventory, always starting with the most damaged item. Repairmen also clean dirty guns (CLEANING_RATE_DIVISOR), and with ADVANCED_REPAIR = TRUE guns can suffer permanent damage that only gunsmiths — or Technicians, if enabled in SkillSettings.ini — can fix.
Train (Practice / Trainer / Student / Train workers) Self-training speed is TRAINING_RATE_DIVISOR (1000); training under an instructor adds INSTRUCTED_TRAINING_DIVISOR (3000). Each level of the Teaching trait adds 30% (TEACHER_TRAIT_BONUS_TO_TRAINING_EFFICIENCY). A trainer needs skill 25+ to teach it (MIN_SKILL_REQUIRED_TO_TEACH_OTHER). Trainers and students can automatically synchronize their sleep (SYNCHRONIZED_SLEEPING_HOURS_WHEN_TRAINING_TOGETHER and friends).
Militia (Train new / Drill / Doctor militia) The militia submenu bundles classic training with two 1.13 additions: drilling existing militia and healing wounded militia. Everything about it lives on the Militia page.

New 1.13 assignments

Each of these gets one line here; follow the link for the full story.

Menu entry What it does Details
Radio Scan A merc with the Radio Operator trait and a radio set scans for enemy movement up to 5 sectors away. Support roles
Disease → Diagnosis / Treatment / Burial Detect outbreaks, treat the sector's civilian population, and bury corpses before they spread disease. Drugs & disease
Intel → Hide / Get Intel A covert merc lies low or gathers intelligence while disguised in enemy territory. Covert operations
Snitch → Spread propaganda / Gather rumours A merc with the Snitch trait boosts town loyalty or picks up rumours about enemy activity; snitches can also go undercover in prisons. Traits, Prisoners
Get Item Moves items from one town sector to another for you. —
Fortify Builds fortifications (sandbags and other structures) in the sector according to externalized layout plans; see [Tactical Fortification Settings] in the INI. Options tour
Administer The merc does paperwork that boosts every other working merc in the town or sector — doctoring, repairing, training, interrogation and more, up to +15% (ADMINISTRATION_MAX_PERCENTAGE; efficiency set by ADMINISTRATION_POINTS_PER_PERCENT). —
Explore Searches the sector and marks the approximate locations of undiscovered items on the sector map — it doesn't pick anything up or disarm traps (EXPLORATION_POINTS_MODIFIER). —
Train → Train workers Trains mine workers, which matters if you play with MINE_REQUIRES_WORKERS = TRUE. Economy
Facility Staffs or uses a facility in this sector — the rest of this page. —

Prisoner interrogation is also assignment work, but it always happens through a prison facility — see Prisoners of war.

Facilities: buildings that work for you

A facility is a structure tied to a whole strategic sector — a hospital, an airport, a mine, a bar — that changes what mercs can do there. The concept started small: old 1.13 gave a hardcoded marksmanship-training bonus in Alma's shooting-range sector. Headrock's HAM 3.5/3.6 externalized and massively expanded the idea, and that system is what ships in 1.13 today.

Outdated wiki alert

Old HAM wiki and forum posts describe a GUN_RANGE_TRAINING_BONUS INI setting as the way the Alma gun range works. That setting no longer exists in the current Ja2_Options.INI — the Shooting Range is now a regular facility defined in FacilityTypes.xml like everything else.

Two data files define the system, both in Data-1.13\TableData\Map:

  • FacilityTypes.xml — what each facility type is: its name, staff limits, the assignments it offers (with tooltips, requirements, hourly costs, performance modifiers and risks) and any production lines.
  • Facilities.xml — which facility sits in which sector, and whether it shows up in the sector info popup right away, only after you explore the sector, or never (ubHidden 0/1/2).

Facility effects come in two flavors:

  • Passive effects apply to the whole sector without any special assignment. The most important one is invisible: in towns, classic militia training is only possible in sectors that contain a facility allowing it — stock data quietly places a hidden "Legacy Militia Training Facility" in most town sectors, and SAM sites allow two trainers, which is why you can train militia there (see Militia). Facility types can also modify mine income, Skyrider's flight costs, and mark entry points for hired militia companies (airports, in stock data).
  • Facility assignments require you to put a merc on the job, which is where the risk/reward game begins.

Using a facility

In the map screen, open a merc's assignment menu and pick Facility. A list of the staffable facilities in the merc's sector appears; picking one shows the jobs it offers — Staff, Rest, Eat, Doctor, Repair Items, Practice Marksmanship and so on. Hover over an entry for a tooltip describing what it does. The assignment column then shows a short label such as "Staff", "Rest", "Eat", "Prison" or "Rumours".

Facility jobs can have entry requirements: minimum stats (the tooltip errors are explicit — "lacks sufficient Wisdom", "lacks sufficient Medical Skill"…), experience level, morale, energy, or minimum local loyalty. Each job has its own staff limit, and each facility a total staff limit — "Too many people are already working at the Hospital" means exactly that.

What you get

Facility assignments modify normal work through percentage modifiers in FacilityTypes.xml (100 = normal):

  • Performance — doctoring at the Cambria hospital runs at 200% speed; the Grumm munitions factory repairs at 200%; the shooting range trains Marksmanship at 130%.
  • Kit degradation — the hospital wears out med kits at only 40% of the normal rate, and the munitions factory's machinery is even gentler on toolkits (30%).
  • Sleep and fatigue — barracks beds restore energy at 120%, while rummaging the Estoni junkyard tires mercs 20% faster than ordinary repair work.
  • Strategic intel — staffing Alma's Military HQ war room or an A.C.A. office improves your awareness of enemy movements on the map (see The strategic war).

What it costs — and the debt trap

Some facility jobs charge by the hour (drinks at a bar, meals at the Alma cantina — see the cost table in Money & economy). You get a confirmation popup — "It will cost $X per hour to staff this facility" — when you assign the merc.

Charges accumulate during the day and are settled automatically at midnight, logged as "Facility Use" in your finances. If you can't pay the full bill, things get ugly: your account is emptied, every merc on a paid facility job is kicked off it, town loyalty across Arulco drops based on what you owe, and the debt carries over. You cannot put anyone on paid facility work again until the entire debt is paid off (the game offers to settle it once you have the money). The system also supports facilities that earn money per hour, though no stock facility does.

Risks and events

Every hour, each merc working a facility job rolls against the event list defined for that job. Events can be bad — injuries in the Grumm bomb workshop, getting drunk at a bar, loyalty loss — or good, like morale boosts and local-loyalty gains. Two INI keys in Ja2_Options.INI scale the whole system:

Setting Default Effect
FACILITY_EVENT_RARITY 1000 How often events (good or bad) trigger. Higher = rarer.
FACILITY_DANGER_RATE 50 How powerful events are. Lower = weaker bad effects, stronger good ones.

The merc's stats matter a lot: each risk type weighs a mix of attributes (mostly Wisdom, plus experience level and job-relevant stats), making skilled mercs trigger good events more often, bad events less often, and land better outcomes when an event does fire. Send a wise veteran to the bomb workshop, not a rookie.

Factories and production lines

FacilityTypes.xml can give facilities production lines that manufacture items over time — but this is switched off by default (FACTORIES = FALSE in Ja2_Options.INI). With it enabled, stock data lets you produce, among other things: 7.62x39mm ammo at the Grumm munitions factory, rags, disguise clothing and (after an upgrade) camo uniforms at the Drassen T-shirt factory, mortar shells converted from grenades at the Grumm bomb workshop, food at the Hicks farm, and Rocket Rifles and minirockets at the Orta laboratory. Production costs money per hour, usually requires minimum town loyalty, sometimes consumes ingredient items or needs a merc staffing the facility, and the finished items appear at a fixed spot in the sector. You manage it through the Factories button in the sector inventory; production switches itself off when loyalty is too low, funds or ingredients run out, or required staff leave.

Notable stock facilities

From the current Facilities.xml — some only appear in the sector info box after you have explored the sector:

Town / place Sector(s) Facilities
Drassen B13, C13, D13 Small Airport (Strength practice; militia-company entry point), A.C.A. office, Small Sleazy Bar, Combat Support Hospital, T-shirt factory, Mine (Explosives practice), Small Church
Alma H13, I13, I14 Military HQ (war room: Staff intel, global propaganda, strategic militia movement), Shooting Range, Army Barracks Cantina (eat here), Military Barracks (Rest), Military Prison, A.C.A. office, Mine
San Mona C5, C6, D4, D5 Bars (Rest, Gather Rumours), Boxing Club (Health practice), Town Prison, Mine
Chitzena B2 A.C.A. office, Mine, Town Prison
Cambria F8, G9, H8 Hospital (best Doctor bonus in the game), A.C.A. office, Bar, Town Prison, Mine
Hicks farm F10 Farm (food production)
Estoni I6 Junkyard (repair items, vehicles and the robot)
Grumm G2, H2, H3 Bomb Workshop (Explosives practice — risky), Munitions Factory (repair + ammo production), A.C.A. office, Bar, Mine
Tixa J9 Prison Complex (largest prison)
Balime L12 National Museum
Orta K4 Laboratory (Rocket Rifle production)
Meduna N3, N7 Small Airport, Military Prison

SAM sites (Drassen D15, Chitzena D2, Cambria I8, Meduna N4) are facilities too: their facility type allows two militia trainers, which is what makes garrison training possible there.

For modders

Facilities are fully data-driven: you can move them, change their jobs, costs and risks, or invent new ones by editing the two XMLs — the shipped data even includes an unplaced "Beach Resort" type as an example. Start with XML files.

Sources